


The Chariot Rolls Along

by ShinyKipp



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, decompression, it stays pretty easy to talk to them, short and sweet, when you know someone for a lifetime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 01:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15037793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyKipp/pseuds/ShinyKipp
Summary: Some late-night wandering turns into early-morning conversation as Davenport tries to moor himself after the storm.(A gift for a dear friend).





	The Chariot Rolls Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [transdavenport](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdavenport/gifts).



> Hey all! This is a (very, very) belated birthday present for  
> [Myles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdavenport/). 
> 
> Thank you to [Brin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliomaniac)  
> for the beta! You were an excellent help, darling. 
> 
> (title is from an old sea shanty)

Davenport wakes up from his 17 hour nap feeling a bit better.

Landing a ship on the Hunger, getting sucked into the bond engine (only to be spat out in a nicely-wooded pine forest south of the Felicity Wilds), finding Barry, Lup, and their new army’s worth of friends, fending off the last of their century-old adversary, and then finding the rest of their family was a _little_ tiring.

So he’s not surprised that the hall is quiet when he trots from his borrowed single room to the boys’ suite across the hall. It’s a shorter walk than it would be from his old private suite, but that room holds far too many not-memories for the time being, he thinks.

He hears voices from Taako’s room, three of them talking in warm and hushed tones.

Magnus’s room sounds like snoring.

His hand is up against the wood of Merle’s door before he even really thinks about it, but he pauses before he raps his knuckles on the heavy fir door.

What is he even doing here, really? Being tired is one thing, stumbling into his ex-lover’s room after a decade of mind-wiped incompetency is another.

Davenport puts his hand down and turns to go out for fresh air.

He’s only three steps down the hallway when the door creaks open and a gruff voice says “Dav?”

He freezes.

“Thought I heard you out here,” Merle says, and there’s three footfalls between the sound of the door closing and a gentle hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “What’s going on, bud?”

“How did you know it was me?” He asks quickly, turning back to Merle in the dark hallway.

Merle laughs, and the sound is both comforting and abrasive; he relaxes into it even as his anxiety cranks up to 11.

“Oh, please, I’d know those frantic tap-tappin’ steps anywhere.”

Davenport swallows the lump in his throat. “Oh, uh, yeah, well, sorry.  I’ll just— go back to that room I’m borrowing now. Bye.”

“Hey now, hold on!” Merle’s hand drops from his shoulder to his forearm. “You don’t need to go and get all flighty on me. I don’t want you to skitter off, now.”

“Y-you don’t?”

“Of course not!” Merle’s hand slides off his arm, lingering for just a moment near his hand. “I mean, hey, Davenport, I’ve barely gotten to talk to you since this whole thing blew up. How about you just come in for a cup’a Joe?” Merle smiles. “If your day’s been anything like mine, I bet you have one hell of a headache.”

There’s a long pause between the two of them, and Davenport stares into the space between them, rather than at Merle. The question is loaded and _not_ , at the same time, and he finds himself stuck between accepting the casual promise of a morning spent unpacking his feelings and the desire to escape, to wander the causeways of the Bureau in the cool night air, speaking aloud old sailor poems just to prove he _can_.

Eventually, Merle’s warm smile wins over the promise of cool nighttime air, and Davenport brings two fingers to his temple. “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, I do have a headache.”

The way Merle looks at him is delightfully familiar, and nostalgia pangs with a lingering warmth through him.

“Well, come on then,” he offers, taking a long step towards his room. Then, with that kind of sober optimism that makes Davenport’s heart buzz with fondness: “The sun’ll be rising, soon.”

The room is a vibrant explosion of color, and Davenport follows Merle through a thicket of plants before the dwarf gestures to a small table with a deck of tarot cards spread in a messy arrangement.

Davenport scoffs. “Yooker? Are you trying to play with _one_ person?”

Merle rubs one hand over the back of his neck as he plucks a twig from a tiny, manicured tree. “I was calling this one Yonker, just to mix it up, but, well you know how it is.”

He doesn’t, but nods anyway, taking a seat and watching Merle whisper some magic to the sprig of willow over a half-empty pot of coffee.

When Merle hands him the tepid coffee, he murmurs a thanks and toys with one of the cards.

“How’s about a game?”

Immediately, he drowns the words ‘I don’t know if I remember how to play’ and the rolling surge of anxiety that lurches through his gut and up his throat with a swig of coffee.

It has the bitter tang of an elixir brewed right, and he feels the flavor sharply against his tongue. It’s grounding; his head almost immediately feels lighter.

It’s not enough to stop him from feeling caught hovering in the space between them again. Really, though, he knows Merle won’t force him to play. If he says no, they’ll wind up gently seated between plants, talking about nothings and drifting through conversations until sunrise.

If he says yes, they get to unpacking.

Davenport sighs, tearing himself away from his fear and staunching the void with pragmatism. “Yeah, sure.” He says eventually. “We, uh. Never finished that other one, I guess.”

There’s a beat of not-good silence where Merle stiffens, and Davenport stumbles over a “Sorry, sorry, it’s too soon, that was too far, uh—” before the other man waves him off.

“Nah, it’s better late than never, right?” Merle gathers the cards and immediately lapses back into silence.

The quiet, wordless space feels haunting for only a moment before Merle offers another placid smile and starts handing Davenport cards.

The laminated, slightly curled cards are familiar, and a memory cuts through the fog of his headache— “ _You don’t have to talk, we’ll just sit here and play_.”

The rules are just as nonsense as they’ve always been, and Davenport only breaks their quiet with a sound of indignant annoyance when Merle says “Checkmate. Now you owe me _more_ money.”

“I do not. We never _once_ bet on this game, Merle.”

“Well that’s just not true. Oh, and I’ve been charging interest these last ten years. Just so you know.”

Davenport frowns.

They lapse into silence again.

“You know?” Merle says and lays down another winning series of cards. Chariot, knight of swords, the Moon. “Maybe we can set up some debt forgiveness. This is just embarrassing.”

“Maybe we do need that,” Davenport sighs. “I swear that I used to win sometimes.”

“You did,” Merle reassures, then finishes his coffee. “You know? I’m glad you were sneaking around out there, Dav—”

“—I wasn’t _sneaking_ —”

“—After it all kicked off, I was worried about you, ya know?”

The sentiment is unsurprising, but the expression of sympathy flushes his cheeks all the same. “Y-yeah, well…” the sentence tapers into silence.

“We went from 0 to 60 back there; how did you feel about that?” Merle asks gently.

Davenport sighs. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, but leave it to Merle to approach the topic delicately and with peace coloring the curve of his smile and the lilt of his tone.

He doesn’t fight the urge to relax into his chair, lulled into calm by the soft smile in the other man’s eye, the greenery surrounding them, and the warm flavor of coffee. “It was nice to fly again,” he says, because it’s true. “I missed, uh, a lot of things without… without really _knowing_ I was missing them, Merle.” He feels the hot burn of tears spring to his eyes, but no wetness falls. “I— it all came back at once.”

A redirection: “Flying again helped?”

“Y-yeah.” A one-word sentence, a sense of aimlessness; Davenport looks to Merle. Davenport can steer a ship with his eyes closed, but a conversation requires a different sort of diligent attention than the helm of a spaceship. He’s always admired Merle for that.

It’s like the dwarf reads his mind. “You know I still love you, right?”

“You… you do?” Davenport holds the coffee mug tighter to keep his hands from shaking. Merle can be open, sometimes _really_ open, but upfront honesty is rare enough to render him shaken.

The response is serious and level. Davenport sees nothing but sincerity in Merle's uncovered eye. “’Course, Dav.”

There’s another long beat of silence, but Davenport doesn't hover, lost, in the space between them anymore. He feels present, embodied, _cared for_ , and he feels a single tear break free and roll down his cheek.

It gets caught in his moustache, and the sudden wet feeling makes him giggle before he can help himself. He rubs a hand across his face, and Merle laughs too.

They exist in the space together, smiling and placid, before Merle forges onward: “I gotta know, what’re you gonna do now?”

Davenport shrugs and leans forward. “I dunno, really.” He tugs idly on the non-damp side of his moustache. Merle, mirroring him, runs a hand along the neat (flower-spotted) braid in his beard. “I thought about, just, uh, going away for a while.”

Merle’s gaze brightens. “Did you, now?”

“Y-yeah.” He shrugs again. “I mean, I spent over one hundred years with the same people. I don’t think some alone time would kill me.”

“I think that’s a great idea, Captain.”

The response is serious, and Davenport feels it assuage the lingering concerns about his decision. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it _is_ a great idea.”

Merle gives him a solemn nod and then hops down from the chair. “Hey, what’d ya say to some of that fresh air? We take a walk, watch the sunrise, you know, that kind of thing.”

Davenport slides off the chair, steps over some wandering ivy, and smiles. “I’d like that. It _is_ almost sunrise.”

Merle offers his hand. “Yeah. I’d be nice to go out before you go away, don’t’cha think?”

He reaches out, hand lingering for just a moment over Merle’s before his hope solidifies into certainty. “Yeah.”

He takes Merle’s hand. “Yeah. Let’s go.”


End file.
